Peckinpah closes Berlin

Special section will screen pics by Benigni, Temple

BERLIN — The Berlin Film Festival’s main Competition section will close with the preem of Sam Peckinpah’s digitally restored 1972 oater “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: Special Edition,” while Ian McKellen and Polish helmer Andrzej Wajda will receive honorary Golden Bears for lifetime achievement.

The Berlinale also completed its selection for the Special section, which will screen pics by Roberto Benigni, Luis Llosa, Neten Chokling, Fredi M. Murer and Julien Temple.

“Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: Special Edition” is based on Peckinpah’s notes and details provided by his colleagues. It will screen Feb. 18 after the award ceremony in the Berlinale Palast.

Wajda, one of Poland’s most distinguished directors, has enjoyed a career spanning more than 50 years. His first feature, “A Generation,” chronicled the Polish resistance movement during the Nazi occupation.

With his “Man of Marble” and “Man of Iron,” Wajda took a stand on the political conflicts of his country, becoming one of the driving forces behind the Solidarity trade union in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the Berlinale Special, part of the official program that screens current works by filmmakers as well as pics by personalities being honored, has unveiled its lineup.

The pics are Benigni’s “The Tiger and the Snow,” a romantic comedy set in occupied Iraq; Llosa’s “La fiesta del chivo” (The Feast of the Goat), starring Isabella Rossellini as a lawyer who returns to her native Dominican Republic; “My Dad Is 100 Years Old,” Rossellini and director Guy Maddin’s tribute to the actress’s father Roberto Rossellini, who died in 1977; Chokling’s “Milarepa,” about one of Tibet’s most famous yogis and poets; Swiss helmer Murer’s “Vitus” (In This World), about a brilliant young pianist who wants a normal childhood; “Glastonbury,” Temple’s look at the history of the popular English music fest; Gerardo Olivares’ “La gran final,” set during the World Cup in 2002; and “Once in a Lifetime,” Paul Crowder and John Dower’s docu about the Cosmos New York soccer team.

The Berlinale is paying tribute to late French producer Humbert Balsan with a screening of “Balsan producteur rebelle,” a documentary by Anne Andreu. Balsan’s last film as producer, “Un ami parfait,” also will screen.

In honor of this year’s recipients of the Berlinale Camera for contribution to film — Michael Ballhaus, Jurgen Bottcher and Laurence Kardish — the sidebar also will unspool Balhaus’ “The Color of Money”; Bottcher’s docu “Die Mauer”; and Tacita Dean’s “The Uncles,” a discussion with Kardish, curator of the MoMa, about film pioneers Basil Dean and Michael Balcon.